We were on a break.

There’s a misconception about deconstruction. A lot of people wandering out of the wreckage that is the current state of evangelical Christianity use the term deconstruction in place of I call bullshit. You might say, “I’ve deconstructed my faith,” when what you really mean is, “A lot of people in the church are full of crap.”

And that’s totally okay. But the misconception is that deconstruction consists of nothing more than calling out the nonsense . . . or that deconstruction involves nothing more than faith.

Let me tell you, I’ve been deconstructing a lot more than faith. The role of constructs in our lives has been all up in my business these last few months. Relationships, habits, work, life itself—all of these things give our lives structure, security, and meaning and, like any construct, can be deconstructed.

These past two months, I’ve gone dark just about everywhere, online and off. The various constructs of my life, seemingly every single one, have stared me in the face and disassembled and reconfigured themselves like so many Legos. Even the routine and discipline of writing took its place in the parade of disintegrating constructs.

It has all felt like grieving. It has all felt like death, which I suppose is the great deconstruction. That realization leads me to conclude deconstruction is a form of death. If you’ve ever been through a divorce, you probably know the feeling of grieving the loss of a life that didn’t leave a corpse.

Well, that is what this mass deconstruction has felt like for me. A mass grieving. When people ask if I’m okay, my first thought is yes. My second thought is summed up by this scene from Ted Lasso.

No, I’m not ok. But I will be.

If I keep searching for some point to dovetail into, I’m never going to publish it. And I reckon I should publish something, just to let you know I’m okay/not really. But don’t panic. I’m not.